Identify your personal enhancement goal

Before your mini-evaluation can be undertaken you need to identify the focus and goal of your evaluation.

A good starting point is to ‘position’ yourself as an authentic evaluator (Stage 1). Orient yourself to this role, focus on the learning and teaching issue you would like to focus on.

This positioning will support you in undertaking a “systematic, analytical investigation of the interactions between learning and teaching” (Vigentini, Negin & Kligyte, 2016, pp. 11-12).

Reflection point

Reflect on your teaching or educational role. Identify an area of your practice that is problematic or that you would like to change. Think about a specific aspect that you would like to enhance, or improve. Position yourself as an evaluator. This process also aligns with that of SoTL - the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Likewise, engaging in SoTL starts with identifying an idea or question of “how student learning might be enhanced” (Trigwell, 2012).

Record this evaluation focus as your enhancement (of learning and teaching practice) goal. It should be a simple sentence or a simple question, for example, I would like to:

improve the student experience in a lab that I redesigned,

make the design of an online quiz more effective,

assess if my new live polling activity engages my students, and

identify what my key presentation strengths, and challenges, are in the classroom.

The possibilities for your enhancement goal are endless. When you identify a goal make sure you can realistically complete it in the timeframe of two weeks.

Talking point

For your mini-evaluation, based on your identified ‘position’ as an evaluator within your context, what are you evaluating? Post your enhancement goal.

Once you have posted your response, we recommend that you also keep a copy in your ePortfolio. You will be able to use this response when writing up your reflection on learning (3a task) in the ePortfolio.